Android customization – Screen Filter, dim your display to see in the dark

Sometimes, the pleasures of Android customization require that we put to use small, single purpose apps to get the job done right. One such app is called Screen Filter, who’s single purpose is to dim your display well beyond the lowest brightness setting on your device.

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As we go through our day, we often find ourselves with varying amounts of lighting to contend with, be it blaring direct sunlight or the dark of night. While I believe it is generally safe to rely on the default device options or creating your own profiles using apps like Lux or Tasker to adequately increase your display brightness, few devices, on the other hand, do a great job of handling low light situations.

When the only light in the room is the gentle glow of all of your power adapters, even the lowest brightness setting on most Android devices feels a little like staring at the Sun. Since this searing pain is not enough to stop us from using our devices, why don’t we take a look at how to use Screen Filter to tone things down a bit.

Before we get started

Screen Filter is a free app in the Google Play Store. If you like the app and wish to offer up a donation to the developer, in a unique approach, the developer asks that you instead make a donation to Wikipedia.

Great news, Screen Filter is also controllable as a Tasker plugin. This is just extra functionality which I will only briefly show off here today, but you’ll need to drop $2.99 on Tasker in the Google Play Store if you want to play along that part.

As mentioned, Screen Filter is made only to dim your display, which it does by placing a semi transparent black screen over top of your existing content. This is not a hardware related solution, and should not provide any battery saving benefits, but at least it let’s you use your device at night.

Warning: Screen Filter can be used to completely black out your display. Please be careful how you use it, as you may be required to pull the battery on your device to recover. On the bright side (no pun intended,) Screen Filter should be your first notification in your Notification bar, you may be able to blindly swipe and tap that to deactivate without having to restart the device.

Screen Filter can be used in three different ways. First, you can go into your apps and choose it from there. Second, and most common, you can set pre-configured widgets on your Homescreens. Last, my personal favorite, Screen Filter can be controlled and configured through Tasker. Let’s look at how to work these three options.

This is pretty simple, open your app drawer by tapping the “all apps” button usually located just above the Home button on your device. Scroll through to find the Screen Filter icon and tap to activate.

Screen Filter will activate at a default value, somewhat out of your control, and remain there until you tap the app icon once again to turn it off. If you like this filter level, feel free to put a shortcut to the app on your Homescreen for easy access.

If the value is not good for you, you can pull down the Notification bar and tap the Screen Filter notification to enter the settings screen. Slide the scroll bar to the desired value and tap the system back button to save and exit.

Likely the most common use of Screen Filter is through the Homescreen widget. This is very simple as well, drop the widget onto your Homescreen and you will be presented a settings page.

Slide the scroll bar until you reach an appropriate filter level.

Tap Save.

You can do this multiple times, setting different values for each widget.

To toggle Screen Filter off and on, simply tap the widget.

Now for my favorite. If you are an avid Tasker user, I just need mention that Screen Filter is a Plugin for Tasker. If you are not an avid Tasker user, no worries, we’re just going to create an action within a Task that activates Screen Filter.

What’s next

Let’s quickly talk about the Screen Filter notification that pops up when the app is activate. When you start Screen Filter from the app drawer, tapping the notification will both deactivate the display dimming and take you to the settings screen. When you activate Screen Filter from a widget or through Tasker, tapping the notification will only deactivate the filter.

Did someone say Tasker? Why of course I did, and now you may be wondering how and when you might activate Screen Filter. Let me give you just two ideas:

First, Screen Filter is great at night, obviously. If you’ve been following along my Tasker tutorials in our Android customization series, you already know how to create a night time mode for your device. If your night mode appropriately coincides with lights out in your home, it would be a simple thing to add Screen Filter to your sleepy time Task in Tasker, thus dimming your display along with muting the ringer and more.

Second thought, perhaps you looked into using Tasker with Trigger when I covered it a few weeks back. If you’ve got a spare NFC tag kicking around, why not program it to fire up Screen Filter? A sticker style NFC tag placed close to the bed makes it super simple to quickly tap to dim your display.

Prevent device reboots: I warned you above that Screen Filter can be set to a value that completely blacks out your display, often requiring a reboot to recover. I pose to you that an NFC tag made to toggle on and off Screen Filter would serve as a backup recovery plan in the event of a blackout.

Next Week

Starting next week on our Android customization series we will begin to look at some battery saving tools, tips and tricks. If you are so inclined, you may want to start tracking your battery life, so you have a baseline to compare to after we make some tweaks. We don’t want to go too crazy here, maybe just snap a screenshot of your Battery stats at the end of each day and we can compare them later.

Respecting that apps like Lux offer a full featured display brightness solution with some awesome configurations and color filters, how do you feel Screen Filter stacks up for your needs?

Just a random image that one finds in their travels on the internet. Sorry, I couldn’t say who created it or owns it, but I’ll take the risk and share it here anyway.

David M Whittley

I’m pretty sure this app has been around now for over 3 years. I have it’s launch icon on a SwipePad pad. It works exactly like a widget toggle.
It’s one of the top 5 apps to be installed on all my new phones.

http://www.emmanuelchenze.com/ Emmanuel Chenze

same here

Abd

WARNING:
When the filter in on, you cant install downloaded apps, the install button will be inactive!

sgsi

There is also screendim, an app that’s so much better

mux

there is also auto-brightness…provided by all manufacturers, preinstalled to your phone. Why mess with all that crap?

le_lutin

Did you read the article? Did you read the part that says:

“When the only light in the room is the gentle glow of all of your power adapters, even the lowest brightness setting on most Android devices feels a little like staring at the Sun”

mux

if anyone feels unconfortable with the lowest brightness possible, he should seek for help at an ophthalmologist, rather than installing crappy apps. It’s like saying “when all these letters on your small screen are really hard to read, download this app…don’t go to the doctor and subscribe you glasses for your condition”

le_lutin

Nobody agrees with you.

person

Idiot

Erik Wisten

Try Twilight instead, it does almost the same thing, but also reduces the blue light so that you get a nice dimmed, reddish screen that does not bother your eyes at all. Oh, and did I mention that it goes on timer depending on location?(also manually changeable)

Albin

I’ve got the tiny, free app Brightness Level down in the task bar – it dims the screen rather than screening to dim, and actually saves battery. Thankfully won’t go to complete blackout (how weird). I have to say certain apps that provide white on black night display options are much appreciated.

Tom Z

I’ve been a Lux Lite user for a long time. I just recently upgraded to the full version of Lux. I’m very happy with it. I may give this new app a try on one of my older devices.

http://www.emmanuelchenze.com/ Emmanuel Chenze

I’ve used Screen Filter since my first Android device 4 years ago (ran Froyo). Never disappointed. Small but handy app.